1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improved battery chamber contacts for handheld electronic devices and particularly to an elongated battery packet housed in an elongated battery chamber and having a plurality of electric contacts longitudinally located on the lateral sides of the battery packet and the battery chamber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional handheld electronic devices such as handheld PC, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), cellular phone (also called as mobile phone), household wireless phone, electronic dictionary, electronic game player, pager, walkman audio player, camera (includes digital camera) and electronic calculator mostly have a battery means to provide power supply needed. FIG. 1A shows a typical conventional battery means for a handheld electronic device 1. It includes a holding chamber 2 and a bottom cover 4 to house one or more standard 1.5V non-rechargeable battery 3 therein. The holding chamber 2 is usually located at a lateral side, mostly a bottom side, of the device. The bottom cover 4 has a latch hook engageable with a latch slot located in the holding chamber. Such a fastening structure is not strong and could easily result in break away of the bottom cover 4 from the holding chamber 2, particularly under external force such as accidental dropping of the device. It also gives an impression of low value. It further uses mainly non-rechargeable battery. For those devices which may also use rechargeable battery, a separated battery charging means should be prepared and provided.
FIG. 1B shows another conventional handheld electronic device 7 which uses a non-standard rechargeable battery 8. It usually has a plurality of electric contacts 11, mostly four, transversely located on a surface engageable with equal number of electric contacts 10 located in the device 7. The device 7 further has a plurality of fasteners 9 to hold the battery 8. There are a number of drawbacks for such a structure. The battery 8 mostly has no standard size. Every manufacturer may design whatever it desires. It mostly cannot use standard non-rechargeable batteries. The fasteners 9 should be relatively large size to provide enough strength to hold the battery 8 as the battery 8 is usually heavier and bulkier than a standard non-rechargeable battery. The transversely positioned electric contacts 10 and 11 also make the whole device wide and bulky. If the electric contacts 10 and 11 are arranged longitudinally (in terms of the moving direction of the battery 8), the battery and the device may be made slim and compact. However such a design may cause a new risk. When the battery 8 is incidentally not fully engaged with the device 7 such that the electric contacts 11 mismatches with the electric contacts 10, e.g., the first three contacts of the battery 8 couple with the last three contacts of the device 7, it will generate wrong signals or even causes electric short circuit and damages the device. This is a problem still begging for solution.